The plot: Meg Griffin has decided to take poetry class as an elective in hopes that she will not only find a place to express herself, but also a place away from her tormentor, Connie D'Amico. Unfortunately for Meg, Connie is in the class for the sake of being near a cute boy. But fortunately for Meg, the teacher, Rodney Weaver is a free-thinking Blithe Spirit who inspires her. And he's cute too. As time goes by, Meg's feelings for Mr. Weaver grow stronger, and soon it becomes clear that he also has feelings for her. He manages to talk the rest of The Griffin family to into treating Meg right, but meanwhile, Connie is determined to make Meg look bad in front of him. She ends up humiliating Meg in swimming class while Mr. Weaver is in the room, but instead of making him dislike Meg, she ends up triggering a flashback to his own humiliation by a girl not unlike her.

Mork and Mindy appear as characters in their show but also in the "real" world.

Meg and Mr. Weaver have a discussion about film (while stoned) where Meg mixes up Jeff Daniels and Jeff Bridges. Mr. Weaver corrects her by telling her that Jeff Daniels was the one in RV and and Jeff Bridges was the one in The Fisher King.

All Men Are Perverts: Mr. Weaver is the chivalrous kind, but as for everyone else... oh dear. Chris and Peterget excited when they hear Lois and Meg are going to have a "Girl-to-girl" talk. Tom Tucker and Principal Shepherd both say perverted things about Connie after her death. Even Mork is uncharacteristically randy. Then there's the cameo by Fritz the Cat... and of course, who else but Quagmire?

Animated Actors: In the very end where it's revealed that Mr. Weaver (and Mork) were Robin Williams in costume. As he says his goodbyes to The Griffins, they all compliment him (in their own, er... unique ways).

What's more Mind Screw-y is that Connie D'Amico is shown alive at the end, complaining to a friend on her cell phone about her character getting killed off. And then Robin Williams accidentally runs her over with his car. Three times.

Well, obviously: Robin Williams. Not just Robin Williams, but Robin Williams as the story's Mr. Fanservice, playing two characters, one being Mork and the other one being a savior for the show's Butt Monkey. By then end, he's a Memetic Sex God, as it's revealed that he and Lois had an affair in the past, that he and Meg actually had sex during the course of "filming", and then there's Pam Dawber's reaction to working with him for the first time in years:

Robin: Pam... it has been so long since we've seen each other! Who'd have thought it would take Family Guy of all shows to- (she grabs him and kisses him for several seconds)

Lois: Well, it's just that sometimes teenage girls can be such a pain to raise. Sometimes you lose your temper... sometimes you say things you don't mean... sometimes you dump hot spaghetti on her face and shove the meatballs down her throat during her "vegetarian" phase.

Chekhov's Gunman: Thomas, the cute boy who Connie joins the poetry class for. He says nothing and doesn't play any important role in the main plot until the end where he helpfully tells Meg where Mr. Weaver went after being fired.

Also, it's mentioned in the news report on Connie's "suicide" that two girls (Shannon Claire and Ashley Dunnstock) committed suicide after attending Connie's 14th birthday. This isn't elaborated upon, but later in the story, Joe comes to arrest Mr. Weaver with Officer Claire and Officer Dunnstock...

Chivalrous Pervert: Mr. Weaver lets inappropriate remarks about Meg's breasts slip out several times, but he still genuinely cares about her, and she still finds him charming.

He also finds teen pop stars Miley Cyrus and JoJo attractive, but also annoying. And yes, the JoJo thing was a deliberately SquickyCast Incest joke (she played Robin's daughter in RV). Ain't I a stinker?

Disco Dan: Retro Rachel, an Eighties-obsessed fan character who appears in only one scene for no real reason. What we do know about her from her short appearance is that she's meant to be a rare sympathetic example of this trope, since she contrasts her peers' ignorance.

Fetish: Meg likes Mr. Weaver's hairy arms, while he thinks it would be hot if she wore Connie's fluffy pink jacket during sex. * Hilarious in Hindsight: This fic was completed long before "Dial Meg For Murder" aired, but it was pretty awesome to see Meg deliver some sort of soda-related punishment to Connie on-screen (even if it wasn't fatal). Oh, and the dominance kiss. Looks like my scene of Meg suggesting she and Mr. Weaver rape Connie together wasn't that far-fetched.

Humor Dissonance: The scenes where Robin's characters are supposedly improvising (to the delight of other characters. Well, most characters anyway) aren't really funny. That is because although I am quite good at spoken improvisation, I cannot capture Robin's magic in a fanfic. Rest assured, were this an actual script to be recorded in a studio by Robin, those parts would say "Robin can go off here".

Then there's a literal example of The SimpsonsAlready Did It when Mr. Weaver hands Meg a note saying "You Are Meg Griffin". He gets confronted by Matt Groening's lawyers on the plane

Kent Brockman News: The fact that JOLT cola (and other sodas from the company) are still being made is more discussed than Connie's "suicide". In addition, Tom Tucker makes inappropriate remarks about Connie on the air.

Noodle Incident: It's never elaborated upon how Connie drove those girls to suicide, and Meg doesn't even want to bring up the "paper bag incident". Also, "Giggity" apparently means something really dirty on Ork, but if even Quagmire's never heard of it, You Do NOT Want To Know.

Mr. Weaver is named after the song "Dream Weaver", which plays during Meg's Self-Fanservice fantasies. His first name is Rodney because, well, I wanted him to share initials with his "voice actor".

Most of Mr. Weaver's dialogue is from Robin Williams' stand-up acts. While this at first may seem like plagiarism, it's actually realism, as Robin does slip some of his stand-up lines into his roles (sometimes he's had more than one role use the same line). Some of his other dialogue is parodies of his movie lines. And a few lines are things he's actually said to me when I've met him.

The publisher, Steve Lehmann is named after Michael Lehmann, director of Heathers. And of course, the late Ashley Dunnstock has the same last name as Martha (the fat girl) from that movie.

Teacher/Student Romance: Meg and Mr. Weaver, obviously. A flashback cutaway shows that this was also the (thankfully one-sided students love teacher) case when he taught elementary school.

The Eighties: The era Mr. Weaver was in high school. Also the obsession of Retro Rachel, of course. However, while Family Guy typically has a nostalgic view of the era, one cutaway shows that Robert Crumb's sex-and-drugs obsessed Fritz the Cat did not have a good time then. (Ironically, the latter two hook up at the end, at least temporarily.)

Too Dumb to Live: Connie, who doesn't grasp that hiding blue drain cleaner in a bottle of blue soda would be a more obvious deception than hiding it in a mug (well, more like Too Hung Over To Live, but it's the same result).

TV Tropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy